Strange behaviour of date fields in Excel-Word mailmerge

[Bill Bradley]

I am using Office 2003 Enterprise with SP2 and latest patches.

I created a spreadsheet used for laptop inventory that has plain old text
fields, some date fields, and some calculated date fields
(=IF(ISBLANK(Q2),"",+Q2+60)).

I then created a document in Word to print using the fields from Excel.

Problem is, I'm getting some squirrely problems with the embedded fields:

1. If a date field (entered, not calculated) is empty, SOMETIMES it shows
up in Word as 12:00AM, sometimes it's blank (as I'd want it, if the
spreadsheet cell is blank). This is also showing up in the Recipient window
(the one that shows the spreadsheet data). I've verified that the
spreadsheet cells REALLY are blank.

2. Sometimes, the date fields show up as a large number, rather than a
date--I'm thinking that this may be the days (hours?) since 1/1/1900, or
something), sometimes not.

3. One date field (Date_Due) would not let me Toggle Fields. I can Toggle
the one way (so that you get the MERGEFIELD), but, when toggling back (I'm
right-clicking on the field), it brings up the SpellCheck menu. The other
fields work fine. Interestingly...I copied the form and spreadsheet, emailed
them to myself at home, and, am sitting at home, VPN'd in, with both copies
open, and, the one at Work has this problem, the one at home doesn't. I see
NO differences between setups.

I THOUGHT this was going to be simple, but, these variances in behavior are
making things take longer and not be successfull.

Thanks.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Your problems may be overcome by selecting Options from the Tools menu in
Word and then go to the General tab and check the box against the "Confirm
conversions at open" item. Then when you attach the data source to the mail
merge main document, select the DDE option.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Bill Bradley]

Thanks, Doug, that was EXACTLY what the problem was. Should be put in the
Help...

Thanks!